无…近乎勇

孙中山先生在《革命精神教育》一文中引用古语说过：“知耻近乎勇。”然而,时至今日,在党的干部队伍中,少数人竞堕落到“无耻近乎勇”的地步。海南省东方市原市委书记、市人大主任戚火责接受数百人行贿,涉案金额高达1400多万元。这当中,其妻原中国银行东方市支行行长符荣英“夫唱妇随”,不仅自己受贿20万元,并犯有巨额财产来源不明罪,而且为了企图转移赃款赃物、掩盖自己及其夫的罪行,竟在看守所里采取逃跑、写串供信、拔妇耍赖、装疯卖假等手段,甚至任卢怪气学构叫,裸着上身满屋跑,躺在地上装死翻白眼,竭尽歇斯底里之能事,令…     

站在新的历史起点上…

今年8月28日是常州国家高新技术产业开发区建区15周年、常州市新北区建区5周年纪念日。15年对于漫长的历史长河来说只是白驹过隙,而对于常州高新区(新北区)来讲,它却代表着一个时代,一段开创历史、创造奇迹的时代。     

The Past Is a…Native Land?

Did the events of September 11, 2001 “change the world,” signifying the birth of an incommensurable brave new world of heightened uncertainty and insecurity? No. That headline-grabbing claim lacks historical perspective. Rather, the Cold War has exerted a profound impact on how America wages the War on Terror simply because the intelligence, bureaucratic, and military-industrial institutions that have shaped U.S. strategy since 9/11 took their present shape during the Cold War. Indeed, dramatic differences between the circumstances of the Cold War era and the dangers confronting the twenty-first century prevail, among them the shift from “conventional” to digital warfare, and from ominous nation-states to “rogue” states and sects. But the respective challenges and constraints shared by the two periods also possess notable similarities. Both the obvious discontinuities and the more subtle continuities with the recent past require judicious assessment from us today. Just as American leaders before World War II needed to “unlearn” the lessons of isolationalism in the 1930s in order to fight World War II, so too do American policymakers today need to unlearn the lessons of conventional warfare—including “intelligence” warfare–in order to combat rogue states and terrorist cells in the twenty-first century.     

As steel goes… A report on Youngstown

This paper analyzes the rhetoric and policy goals of the living wage movement. While the rhetoric focuses on workers in the context of their families, the wage levels demanded by activists and mandated by laws are almost never adequate to support families with children, especially single‐parent families. We contend the problem is a fundamental, conceptual one: focusing only on setting a single hourly wage obscures the diverse needs of poor families. In this context, the needs of the most marginalized families (single‐parent families) become invisible. However, a “living wage” is recently being conceived more broadly by activists, in terms of wage and non‐wage work supports, and is seen as applying to the working poor more generally. We argue that the current transformation of the idea of a living wage must continue if the movement is to represent all poor workers. We explore implications for the policy agenda of the movement.     

经济全球化及中国工会的几个问题：与国际劳工组织 …

世界经济已进入全球化时代。中国加入世贸组织也已扫除了最大障碍。社会主义市场经济与国际经济接轨已成必然。本文作者与国际劳工组织成员就中国工会与国际工会的联合、集体谈判集体合同、工会的罢工权利、三方机制、工人参与等进行了对话,有助于从各个角度了解经济全球化对中国工会的影响。     

Comment on Dowell Myers and Elizabeth Gearin's “current preferences and future demand for denser residential environments”: In praise…or at least acceptance…of ambiguity

Abstract

It is clear that attempts to discern consumer attitudes toward neighborhood form yield only ambiguity. Denser, more walkable residential environments are impossible to define in a universally applicable manner because of the unique characteristics of an individual neighborhood and its relationship to a region's climate, tradition, and heritage. Consumer preferences are likewise ambiguous and contradictory; this is simply due to many Americans’ lack of personal familiarity with compact, walkable neighborhoods.     

…And keep your enemies closer: Building reputations for facing electoral challenges

Rather than occupants of a position in an ideological policy space, we conceive of legislators as reputation builders – the reputation they think will best serve them in the next election. Our theory suggests that legislators will seek to undercut the efforts of the challenger they fear most – the one in the primary or the one in the general election. We test our reasoning by examining legislative cosponsorship patterns in the U.S. House of Representatives. We find evidence that legislators respond to information about their potential future electoral challenges by building reputations as loners, partisans, or dissidents. We also show that these choices have implications for an incumbent's prospects in the next election. Building the wrong reputation increases the strength of future challenges.     

Sexism predicts favorability of women in the 2020 democratic primary… and men?

Considerable research has examined the role of sexism and vote choice, especially within the context of the 2016 presidential election. These findings are clear, consistent, and unequivocal – sexism hurt Hillary Clinton at the ballot box. However, the 2020 presidential primary provides an opportunity to examine sexism's effects on candidate favorability among a broader range of candidates. Using data on candidate favorability from the 2019 VOTER survey, I find that sexism is unsurprisingly predictive of lower favorability of women running for the Democratic nomination. However, I also find that sexism influences support for men running for the nomination, in a way that is statistically indistinguishable from its effect on support for women. This effect persists even among only Democratic respondents.     

They Come over Here … 300 Years of Xenophobic Propaganda in England

England's rulers, merchants, and organized labor in the early modern period (from the 16th to the 18th centuries) were all actively using what today we would call propaganda. Each group appreciated the need to get popular opinion on its side, or at the least to convince other groups it was in the public interest to act in a particular way. This study focuses on the use of xenophobic narratives by these actors in order to further their political, economic, or cultural objectives. The targets were economic rivals including the Dutch, but most particularly ethnic and religious outgroups, including Roman Catholics, Muslims, and Jews. Although there were public relations win-wins for anyone who was able successfully to demonize foreigners, racist and xenophobic propaganda was often more pernicious than the tellers realized, in many cases extending its influence over several generations. In addition, it is clear that many narratives failed to engage with public opinion, for reasons that were not always clear to the groups responsible for them.     

Wenn Wenige den Ausschlag geben … Strategisches Erststimmenwählen bei deutschen Bundestagswahlen 1994–2009

Based on official election records from East German constituencies, this paper examines the importance of strategic voting in German Bundestag elections. The results show that: (1) voters do indeed cast strategic ballots; (2) overall, the CDU and SPD benefit most often from strategic votes; (3) up to 9% of voters in the constituency cast strategic votes; and (4) that number was large enough to tip the scales in a number of constituencies, thus affecting the allocation of surplus seats in the Bundestag.